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Formed in 2002, Angrajazz Orchestra is a training/work-in-progress project held by the Cultural Association Angrajazz, with musical direction by the professors Pedro Moreira and Claus Nymark.  Promoting regular working sessions and workshops, Angrajazz Orchestra became the main “jazz school” in the Region, contributing for Angrajazz to be considered as the main and most important means of unveiling the jazz music in the Azores.

The Orchestra has played with many well known Portuguese jazz musicians such as Paula Oliveira, Mário Laginha, Zé Eduardo, Afonso Pais, Mário Barreiros, Hugo Alves, Luís Cunha, Paulo Gaspar, Ricardo Toscano, Carlos Azevedo and Jeffery Davis.  Apart from numerous concerts in Terceira Island, the Orchestra has played in the islands S. Jorge, Graciosa, Faial, S. Miguel and Pico.  Outside the Region, the Orchestra has performed in the cities of Funchal and Lisbon.

In 2015 the Angrajazz Orchestra participated in the cultural program “Lisboa na Rua” as part of the cycle “The Art of the Big Band – 5 Jazz Orchestras”.

At the 18º Angrajazz, the Orchestra performed, for the first time in Portugal, the integral of “The Far East Suite” written by the great jazz musician Duke Ellington.  In that occasion the Orchestra featured two very important Portuguese jazz musicians – clarinetist Paulo Gaspar and saxophonist Ricardo Toscano.

The Orchestra has released two CDs –”Angrajazz Orchestra with Paula Oliveira” (2006) and “Angrajazz” (2018).

In this 25º Angrajazz, the big band will present to his public the result of one more of this educational project, and will have the honor of having as guest musician the extraordinary spanish saxophonist Perico Sambeat.

Perico Sambeat  . Alto and soprano saxophonist Perico Sambeat is considered today as one of the most important spanish jazz musicians, owning a tremendous prestige with an extraordinary musical career inside and out of Spain. With more than twenty-five recordings as a leader and more than a hundred as a sideman, they´re especially remarkable his works with musicians as Brad Mehldau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Tete Montoliu, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, and many others.

He has played in jazz festivals and clubs all over the world. Along his career, he has received numerous awards, such as the “Bird Award” given by the North Sea Jazz Festival to the musician deserving wider recognition (2003), to the best recording of the year to “Flamenco Big Band” (2008 and 2009), or “Jazz Terrassaman” in 2017.

Nowadays he combines teaching in Berklee College of Music Valencia Campus with his activity as a jazz performer and Big Band conductor.

Modelled on bands like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, “Generation Y” celebrates the importance of mentorship within jazz and the arts at large. Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. teams up with a quintet featuring the next generation of emerging jazz talent. Ulysses has been on faculty at Juilliard in the role of Small Ensemble Director for over seven years and this ignited his desire to play with a younger collective of outstanding musicians. Their energy is high, their creative outlook is fresh, and the result is a high calibre, seriously swinging band with Ulysses at the helm. For this tour Francesco Cafiso, the internationally renowned Italian saxophonist, joins the band.

Three time Grammy Award-winning americandrummer producer and educator Ulysses Owens Jr., born 1982 has eight successful albums of his own and has also gained special attention for his performances on Grammy Award-winning albums by Kurt Elling and The Christian McBride Big Band .

In addition to five GRAMMY Award Nominated albums with Joey Alexander, Christian McBride Trio, John Beasley’s Monk’estra, and Gregory Porter,both Jazziz and Rolling Stone Magazines picked his album “Songs of Freedom,” as a Top Ten Album for 2019; his most recent Big Band release, “Soul Conversations,” received rave reviews and was added to multiple playlists.

The Ulysses Owens Jr. Big Band has also been voted “Rising Star Big Band” of 2022 by Downbeat Magazine. His eighth album release “A New Beat” (2024) features his new “Generation Y” band andJazziz Magazine voted it as one of “10 Albums You Need to Know in 2024”.  As an author Ulysses has published three books and is also a regular contributing writer for several publications.

Ulysses received his Bachelor Fine Arts from The Juilliard School in 2006 and was the 1^stAfrican American Jazz Drummer to be admitted to their Inaugural Jazz Program in 2001. He is currently slated to pursue his Master’s Degree in Jazz Performance and Arts Administration at Florida State University in the Fall of 2024.He is artistic director of his family’s non-profit organization, Don’t Miss a Beat.

Francesco Cafiso (born in Sicily on 24 May 1989) was barely nine years old when he took his first steps on the stage, working with musicians of international acclaim.  Since then, Francesco has gone on to perform with a dizzying array of the biggest names in jazz, including Wynton Marsalis, Hank Jones, Dave Brubeck, Cedar Walton, Mulgrew Miller, Jimmy Cobb, Ben Riley, Ray Drummond, Lewis Nash, James Williams, Joe Lovano, Christian McBride, George Mraz, Kenny Wheeler, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Enrico Rava, and Stefano Bollani, to name but a few.

From: https://www.usojazzy.com/about

Charlie Parker with Strings is the name of two albums by saxophonist Charlie Parker, released in 1949 and 1950 by Mercury Records.  The sessions pair Parker with a string orchestra and a jazz rhythm section, instead of the traditional bebop quintet.  These albums were hugely successful at the time.

Charlie Parker, also known as Bird, thus fulfilled an old dream, which consisted of bringing together the sound universes of jazz and classical music that he admired so much, in particular the work of composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varèse.  The repertoire, based on standards from the American songbook, thus gained a different sound, inspiring Parker to the point of leaving us some of his best performances.

The opportunity to recreate this program at the Angrajazz Festival is very exciting, with the participation of the young saxophonist Ricardo Toscano and his quartet of young lions, accompanied by a beautiful chamber orchestra – Ensemble AH – formed by some of the best elements of the Angra Regional Conservatory, thus opening a door of collaboration between Angrajazz and this institution that we hope can develop in the future.

Ricardo ToscanoQuartet . Formed in 2013, this Quartet is one of the most exciting national groups.  Its leader, alto saxophonist Ricardo Toscano, has as companions João Pedro Coelho on piano, RomeuTristão on double bass and João Pereira on drums.  He performed for the first time at an international jazz festival in 2014, at the 16th Angrajazz.

In 2018 he released the homonymous album “Ricardo Toscano Quartet” (Clean Feed Records), considered the most important of the year in Portugal, then taking the group to the main venues and festivals in the country.  In 2022, Toscano released his second album “Chasing Contradictions” (Clean Feed), also voted as one of the albums of the year by critics, and recognized by the Prémios Play as the best album of the year.

The jazz practiced is spiritual and loaded with the bop tradition, with clear influences from Charlie Parker, but it is such the freshness, energy and personality that it cannot be confused with the original matrix.  It’s no longer just about good jazz, it’s about brilliance.

Pedro Moreira  .  .  Saxophonist, composer and conductor, born in 1969 in Lisbon.  He studied music in New York.  He has performed with his group at major national festivals as well as in several countries in Europe, Africa and the USA.  Heis a lecturerat Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa.

Conductor of the Hot Clube Jazz Orchestra and the Angrajazz Orchestra, he has worked with the European Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, the Orchestra, the Algarve Orchestra and the Portuguese Chamber Orchestra.

He composes for various jazz and classical music groups, as well as for theater.  As an arranger and/or music producer he has worked with artists such as Camané, Pedro Abrunhosa, Cristina Branco, Milton Nascimento, AntónioZambujo among others.

Pianist, accordionist and composer Ben Rosenblum has traversed a truly unique musical path, one that has seen him perform alongside world-class musicians across more than twenty music genres and fifteen countries, lead bands at prestigious venues across the world, all while maintaining a signature, melodic musical voice. Rosenblum’s journey has taken him on tours with Rickie Lee Jones and singer Kiran Ahluwalia. He’s played Brazilian choro with EphratAsherie Dance and Brazilian forró with Nêgah Santos and forró band Forró in the Dark. His roots in jazz have led to a long relationship with Grammy-winning bassist Curtis Lundy, performing at festivals alongside jazz luminaries Bobby Watson, Sean Jones and Warren Wolf. He has appeared with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on accordion, and as a guest soloist on piano at Carnegie Hall’s Stern-Perelman Auditorium with Maestro Reona Ito’s New York Harmonic Band. Throughout it all, Rosenblum has always maintained the same priority – to tell a compelling story with his music, reaching the hearts of his audience and connecting on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level.

Rosenblum brings this wealth and diversity of experiences to his projects as a leader, overseeing a full tour schedule as a solo artist, with his trio and most recently, with his Nebula Project, a seven-piece ensemble featuring a diverse cast of New York City’s most in-demand jazz musicians.With the Nebula Project, the pianist/accordionist digs deeply into his cosmopolitan roots in NYC to create a truly global music. Across multiple tours Rosenblum has brought his bands to perform at some of the world’s most respected music venues, including Ravinia, Kuumbwa Jazz Center, the Library of Congress, Bird’s Eye (Basel) and Yokohama. At any given show, Rosenblum might draw on influences as diverse as Brazilian forró, Irish reels and jigs, Bulgarian folkloric songs, Dominican merengue and Middle Eastern traditional rhythms, and combining them with an extensive rooting in American jazz and traditional music. Rosenblum leans on personal experiences working with master musicians from these and other areas of the world in order to write explorative, emotional, narrative-driven compositions that have garnered awards from ASCAP, Downbeat and beyond.

Nebula Project released its first album “Kites and Strings” in 2020, having been voted that year by readers of Jazz Times magazine as the second Best New Artist of the year and the album received positive reviews from more than twenty publications. In 2023 he published “A Thousand Pebbles” with great prominence in Downbeat magazine.

From: https://www.benrosenblummusic.com/about.html

Composer-pianist VIJAY IYER (Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts, Department of Music & Department of African and African American Studies) has carved out a unique path as an influential, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. His deeply interactive, powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the composer-pianist lineage from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the creative music movement of the 60s and 70s, and rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa. As MinnPost recently observed, “twining composition and improvisation is rightfully his most celebrated métier.” He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship; composed for orchestras, soloists, and chamber ensembles; and collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and music-makers from across the planet.

Iyer’s music finds perhaps its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised by NPR (National Public Radio) as “truly astonishing” and by The New York Times as “one of the best bands in jazz.” Iyer’s trio conception, developed over the last 30 years, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal; the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit Money Jungle; Andrew Hill’s Smokestack; McCoy Tyner’s 1970s ensembles; the rhythm-section alchemies of James Brown, FelaKuti, and the Meters; South Asian dance rhythms; and the expressive nuance of chamber music.

In 2021, an all-star incarnation of Iyer’s trio, now with bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, released Uneasy (ECM), which was named one of the best jazz albums of 2021 by numerous publications. Their widely acclaimed 2024 follow-up, Compassion (ECM), was praised by All Music Guide for its “fresh, intensely interactive, seemingly time-elasticizing approach to the jazz piano trio that is at once bracingly kinetic, intimate, and lyrical.”

This trio’s music combines Iyer’s attraction to dark colors, elliptical shapes, and plunging momentum with a pronounced sense of shared purpose, equality, and attunement among the musicians. The material includes Iyer’s compositions alongside occasional familiar and obscure covers. Their concerts feature breathtaking, spontaneous variations on their repertoire, full of uncanny synchronies, unpredictable formal shifts, and exuberant playing.

He was voted Musician of the Year in 2016 and 2018 and his sextet best group of the year 2018 in the critics’ votes for Downbeat magazine. Every year he has been elected to the top positions for pianist of the year.

From: Text sent by Vijay Iyer’s Agent

Grammy Award winning vocalist Catherine Russell is a native New Yorker, born into musical royalty. Her father, the late Luis Russell, was a legendary pianist/composer/bandleader, and Louis Armstrong’s long-time musical director.Her mother, Carline Ray, was a pioneeringvocalist/guitarist/bassist who performed with International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Mary LouWilliams, and Sy Oliver.

A graduate of American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Russell has toured the world, performing and recording with David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Jackson Browne, Michael Feinstein, The Holmes Brothers, Wynton Marsalis, among others, appearing on over 200 albums. Since the 2006 release of her debut album ‘Cat’, six acclaimed albums have followed, including ‘Strictly Romancin’, awarded Prix du Jazz Vocal 2012 by the Jazz Academy in France, and ‘Bring It Back’ in 2014. Catherine Russell was a featured artist on a Grammy Award winning soundtrack album for the HBO-TV series, Boardwalk Empire.

Her 6^th album, ‘Harlem On My Mind’ (2016), received a Grammy Nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Catherine has appeared on PBS-TV and on Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR. Will Friedwaldcalls Catherine Russell “one of the outstanding singers of our time.” Catherine’s 7^th album, ‘Alone Together’(2019) held the firstposition on the JazzWeek 2019 Year End Chart, while receiving her 2^nd Grammy Nomination.Also in 2019, Catherine appeared in the feature film Bolden, and contributed vocals to the soundtrack album by Wynton Marsalis. She appears as featured vocalist on three tracks on Big Band Holidays II, accompanied by Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with. In 2022, Catherine Russell released ‘Send For Me’, her 8^th album, receiving rave reviews in national media outlets.

With universal acclaim, Catherine Russell has performed on four continents. She’s been a hit at major Jazz Festivals including Monterey, Newport, North Sea, JazzAscona, Montreal, Bern, Rochester International, Panama, Tanglewood, and at sold out venues like The Kennedy Center, Scullers in Boston, The Dakota in Minneapolis, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in NYC, SFJazz in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles.

Her repertoire features vital interpretations, bursting with soul and humor. With an off-the-beaten-path song selection, sparkling acoustic swing, and a stunning vocal approach, Catherine Russell has joined the ranks of the greatest interpreters and performers of American Popular Song.

From: https://www.catherinerussell.net

Although Mário Laginha and João Paulo Esteves da Silva are two of the leading European jazz pianists of their generation, viewing them primarily as jazz pianists tends to obscure the breadth of their respective works. We must see them, above all, as composer-pianists of the great Western tradition, prior to the (quite recent) advent of the composition/interpretation dichotomy that today characterizes much of the so-called “classical” music, and major figures of what we could call “new Portuguese music”. As jazz is one of the richest and most relevant forms of creative expression of the 20th century, and both composer-pianists are open to the most varied influences, it is natural that this form of expression is central to the music they make, not only in terms of aesthetic and at the level of their creative process. This last aspect makes them, among other things, jazz pianists, but that does not imply that this is the most appropriate way to characterize them. (If Schumann or Chopin were alive today, they would most likely be “jazz pianists.”)

A look at their respective discographies reveals, despite significant differences (not least because they are sui generis artists), a series of interesting parallels: both debuted under their own name in the mid-90s, with albums that defined the type of sound they which some would call “Portuguese jazz”; both successfully explored the classic trio format of piano, double bass and drums, in addition to venturing solo; both developed fruitful collaborations with two notable saxophonists, the Englishman Julian Argüelles (Laginha) and the North American Peter Epstein (Esteves da Silva), who adapted to their music like few others, and also with two Portuguese guitar virtuosos invested in the emancipation of this instrument, Ricardo Rocha (Esteves da Silva) and Miguel Amaral (Laginha); and, more recently, both have collaborated with two of the main contemporary fado singers, Camané (Laginha) and Ricardo Ribeiro (Esteves da Silva).

Now, it was precisely alongside these last two, as part of a show entitled “DuasVozes, QuatroMãos”, that they recently shared the stage again, something that had not happened for more than two decades, since the time they co-led the (still unreleased) chamber group Almas e Danças. This reunion was not accidental and here they are now performing as a duo: two pianos that, although not certainly twins, we would say brothers, perhaps sons of Keith Jarrett, born in Portugal.

Camilla George is a visionary saxophonist, composer, bandleader and innovator. Her strong cultural roots and love of fusing African and Western Music has informed her own unique style, a key reason why she is a firm fixture on the new London Jazz scene, alongside peers such as Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings.

Her music is a hypnotising blend of Afrofuturism, hip hop and jazz, with a politically minded subtext that has a powerful connection to her Nigerian identity, lineage and heritage, reflecting African history, culture and slavery.

Born in Eket, Nigeria, Camilla has been interested in music from an early age and particularly in the fusion of African and Western music. She grew up listening to FelaKuti, as well as Jackie McLean and Charlie Parker. She began playing the saxophone aged 11 years old, when she won a music contest where the prize awarded her saxophone lessons.Camilla went on to study with many jazz greats such as Jean Toussaint, Julian Siegal and Martin Speake at Trinity College of Music where she gained a Masters in Jazz Performance, as well as being awarded The Archer Scholarship for Outstanding Performance in 2011.

In 2009 she joined the award-winning band Jazz Jamaica and in 2014 she formed his own project. Dubbed “The Golden Girl of Jazz” by The Evening Standard, Camilla’s debut album ‘Isang’ (meaning ‘journey’ in Ibibio, her native language) received widespread critical acclaim.

Her follow up album, ‘The People Could Fly’ (2018), featuring special guest Omar, as well as in hugely respected guitarist Shirley Tetteh, gained substantial critical acclaim. The album looked at tales that slaves passed onto their children through generations and, whilst full of sorrow, was essentially a story of hope for black people and mankind that we can one day live together in harmony.

Camilla’s band has gigged solidly in several places and jazz festivals. Dee DeeBridgewater was so impressed with her that she remarked, “The world is safe because we have Camilla!”

As part of the EFG London Jazz festival Camilla’s concert was described by Jazz Journal as “A truly memorable concert…Jazz superstars in the making” with the London Jazz Review speaking of “the mature and imaginative compositions combined with some sublime saxophone solos”.

Camilla has been nominated for an Urban Music Award for Best Jazz artist in 2017 and 2018 and nominated for a Jazz FM award for Best Instrumentalist 2019 and reached the final in the DC Jazz Prix in 2021.Most recently, she was awarded the PRS Foundation Momentum Award and released her third studio album, ‘IbioIbio’.

From: https://www.camillageorge.com